The level of Eagle Lake is 4 feet above normal, and a high Mississippi River is preventing from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from taking action to bring it down, a Corps spokesman said.

Greg Raimondo, spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District, said the problem is the Mississippi is too high to let Steele Bayou drain and allow the Corps to open the gates at Muddy Bayou to drain it and subsequently Eagle Lake.

“Everything up in the Delta flows down either the Little Sunflower (river) or Steele Bayou,” he said.

“The Mississippi River has been so high the water levels have remained really, really high inside Steele Bayou. We gotten up as high as 92 (landside); now we’ve come down to 84.25 feet.

“Because the Mississippi River is still high, and because Steele Bayou is high, we can’t open Muddy Bayou to drain Eagle Lake. So all the rain falling on Eagle Lake has been driving up the lake levels.”

Raimondo said the high lake level has led to some of the piers along the lake getting damaged, forcing the Warren County Board of Supervisors to enact a now wake zone to reduce the problem.

He said Corps officials are expected to meet with the Board of Supervisors and officials with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries & Parks, Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries and federal wildlife officials April 27 to discuss the problem.

“We still have Muddy Bayou about 5 feet higher on the land side than the Steele Bayou side,” he said, adding the extra five feet needs to be drained to help Eagle Lake.

And there is another problem. Raimondo said the Corps can only “crack open” the Muddy Bayou gates to avoid allowing silver carp into Eagle Lake. The carp is an invasive species that would complete with native game fish in the lake like bass and crappie for food and could endanger them.

And the Mississippi, which has been dropping is expected to “bottom out” and begin rising to 34.7 feet by Wednesday, he said.

“Every time it rains in the backwater, it’s a struggle to get water out of Steele Bayou, and we have to find a way to get Steele Bayou down by 5 feet before we can open Muddy Bayou,” he said. “And the river hasn’t allowed us to let Steele Bayou out.”